We recorded an intriguing pod last night with Alan Alger and Anthony Gale (son of Tony Gale, ex-West Ham player), which included a match preview, a discussion of xG and its applications, and the ongoing debate regarding celebrations. You can get a watch here if you want.
We have a few of days until our match against West Ham, and Arteta will appear in the press conference room at 1.30pm today, but what astonished me about Anthony’s (West Ham fan) comments about his club was how uninspired he was right now. He claimed he’d been observing a declining trajectory at West Ham for some time, which surprised me to be honest. His general opinion was that the performances had been poor for some years, but they had been picking up the occasional result here and there. He listed the Burnley game in November as one. He didn’t really talk about the game at The Emirates directly, but he addressed encounters in which the fans have not been pleased with the football, but because they have been scoring points, West Ham fans have been reluctantly accepting of what is going on. He also predicted that we’d win 4-1 on Sunday.
I do not think I can see that. I’ll go into more depth about the game in the coming days, but this surprised me because I assumed Moyes would get a free pass this season after winning a title the last time out. But it goes to illustrate how long fan support can persist when results don’t go your way.
We can detect similarities at the end of Wenger’s era. In 2016/17, we won the FA Cup following the Mertesacker Cup Final. Things had been declining for some time, and we had finished fifth for the first time under his leadership. The following season, they finished sixth, the stadium was half empty at times, and the club announced his resignation with a month or two left in the season. It feels like that with Moyes right now; he was the trophy hero last season, but if their play continues to deteriorate, he will not be offered that new contract, which I’m sure he would welcome.
Of course, Arsenal’s arrival provides a ray of hope; we enjoy instilling hope where there is none. Take a look at Fulham’s performance when we played them: In the previous three Premier League matches, they had lost all three, scored 0 goals, and conceded eight. Since playing us, they have not won a Premier League game and have been eliminated from both domestic tournaments!!
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